“He oft reiterated his bold declaration, from Out of the Mouths of Babes, to the effect that, The child knows, what the Teacher must recover. For the old way of rote-teaching must be banish’d; and all old textbooks, crammed with dead, spiritless facts; and, as well, all teachers who clung to the old ways and did not truly love both their charges, and Wisdom itself. John Quincy Zinn’s experimental class at the Brownrrigg Academy did not sit inertly in their seats, but moved freely about, and were encouraged by their teacher to participate in divers conversations, and to ask a good deal of questions. They studied poesy not by committing verse to memory, but by writing it; they became disciplined in the exacting art of perception, by drawing (with many comical, but surely instructive, results); they were encouraged to invent new words, and new ways of spelling old words—for our great English tongue, as John Quincy taught, is itself a massive machine, an invention of sorts, in which all must participate. They learned geography by applying themselves to actual mapmaking, and anatomy, by studying the skeletons of real animals. Mr. Zinn being a firm believer in manual labor and dexterity, it was necessary that his young charges—girls no less than boys—acquire the use of hammers, saws, files, and planes, and other homely instruments, scorned by the genteel classes. Singly, or in small teams, these amazing children worked on their own machines, and experimented with weights and measurements, and pulleys, and wheels, and water, and fire, and rapid changes of temperature, and direct and indirect sunlight, and the relative buoyancy of feathers, pebbles, blocks of wood, grass, snow, and nails. They designed dirigibles, and submarines, and ideal dwelling places, and model cities. For Invention, Mr. Zinn taught, is at the very heart of the Universe, and the especial secret of our great Nation, yet but dimly understood by the rest of the world.”

–Joyce Carol Oates, A Bloodsmoor Romance